Outsmarting the Holiday Buffet

The typical holiday buffet is filled with high calorie temptations,  but you can outsmart the even most decadent buffet with these simple strategies I shared on Fox19 Cincinnati this morning. Here’s a link to the video clip.

1 – Don’t save your calories. On party day, don’t be the one saying, “I’ll just skip breakfast so I can eat more tonight.” It never really works! You end up starving and then you justify too many trips to the food line! Instead, eat well on Party Day – breakfast, lunch, and dinner or a small snack depending on what will be served at the party. Keeping the rest of the day normal will help you avoid overindulging.

2 – Look before you eat. There’s no rule against making a reconnaissance trip through the buffet line BEFORE you fill your plate! This avoids the chance you’ll end up with a plate full of your “second favorites” because you didn’t realize your favorites were there! When it’s time to fill a plate,  be choosy; pick the treats you only see a few times a year and skip the “fillers.” At each dish, ask yourself, is it worth it?

3 – Build a meal, not a mountain! How many times have you watched someone return from a buffet with a plate heaped with food. Sometimes the foods don’t even go well together; it’s as though he thought he HAD to take it because it was THERE! The goal, my friends, is not to see how much you can fit on a plate – it’s to build a meal you’ll enjoy and not regret. Bear that in mind!

4 – Careful with the cocktails. By all means you can enjoy a festive beverage, but remember that they pack a one two punch – they affect your judgment AND they add empty calories. Try a glass of wine instead of a bottle or have a delightful glass of champagne or one signature cocktail. You’ll remember the evening and have plenty of energy for your never-ending December to do list the next day!

5 – Channel Scarlett O’Hara – Scarlett famously quipped ” Tomorrow is another day,” and the same goes for you.  If you do overdo it, begin the next day with a cleansing breakfast – a simple smoothie or  a fruit plate with a steaming mug of green tea and plenty of water  – these will all help you to purge salt and rehydrate after your indulgent evening.

Here’s the recipe for the smoothie I made during the segment – it’s what I call the Back on Track Smoothie –  quick and easy and a pretty shade of green. Enjoy!

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Rosemary Fingerling Potato Treats

Are you ready to par-tay? The season is in full swing so here’s the next Nourish idea for a healthy holiday app that is a sure crowd pleaser. These adorable potato bites are prepped in a snap and save you from fussing with individual canapés (I’ll save that for next week!). Warning: these won’t last long on your buffet because they’re oh-so-good. I promise even the kids will love them.

Note: If you can’t find fingerling potatoes (they’re the small skinny ones) you can use small red potatoes, but the shape of the fingerlings makes for a beautiful presentation.

 

Rosemary Fingerling Potato Treats

 

serves 6

 

Ingredients:

16 fingerling potatoes, washed and cut in half lengthwise

olive oil

2 tablespoons finely minced rosemary

coarse salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

1/2 cup light sour cream

skim milk

1/4 cup diced  jarred roasted red peppers

 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Place potatoes in a large bowl. Add enough olive oil to lightly coat. Gently mix in rosemary and salt and pepper.

3. Place potatoes, cut side down, on a baking sheet at bake for 35-45 until cooked through.

4. Remove from oven and arrange potatoes on a plate or platter. Sprinkle with salt & pepper and scatter diced red pepper over potatoes. Serve with sour cream thinned with a little skim milk (mix the sour cream and milk in a bowl with a whisk and then transfer to your serving bowl) for dipping. (These can be served hot or at room temperature.)

 

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The Trouble with Safe Foods

When I was in college, if I would have ranked (by frequency) the foods that made their way into my mouth, bagels, Diet Snapple, yogurt covered pretzels, dry cereal, pasta, fat free frozen yogurt, and rice would have topped the list. These were my Safe Foods – the ones I was sure were the ticket to weight loss. I wasn’t actually losing any weight, but that didn’t seem to matter. I just kept eating the same things day after day thinking, I suppose, that one day the pounds would just start to drop off!

Looking back from my current vantage point, I can see how misguided that was, but at the time no one could have told me I was wrong. I’d constructed this security blanket of Safe Foods and was terrified to veer from it. Being asked to eat, say, a steak and a baked potato, was scary. Pizza? Terrifying.

This behavior of maintaining a mental list of Safe Foods is quite common, but it is fraught with issues.

1) The lists are often illogical – they include some junk foods (like frozen yogurt or Twizzlers) while omitting nutritional powerhouses (like avocado or nuts or oils) without good reason.

2) They’re trend-based instead of science-based. The diet trend of the year rules. In my day it was low fat (but anything with the word “yogurt” in it was deemed healthy as well!) Then it shifted to low carb, then NO carb, now gluten free. People seem to get stuck in any one of these phases and can’t get out.

3) They’re limiting! Safe Foods rob us of the chance to experiment, to sample, to dabble. In my view, eating should be a pleasure, not an exercise in vigilant self-deprivation.

Are you feeling constrained by a list of  foods that you turn to again and again? What would it take for you to open your mind to new possibilities and make selecting from a menu fun again? Does the idea exhilarate you or might it actually scare you?

To get started, perhaps you could try one of the recipes in this archives of this blog. Or contact one of our Nourish Health coaches – we’d love to help you rediscover the vast world of healthy foods out there for you to explore!

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